


Punishment

by beerecordings



Category: jacksepticeye egos - Fandom
Genre: Attempt and Recovery, Blood, Don't copy to another site, First chapter is the rough one and then after that it's trying to make it right again, JSE egos - Freeform, Mild Gore, Trust and Brotherhood, and dealing with the aftermath, antisepticeye, suicide TW, suicide attempt tw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-24 17:15:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21821533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beerecordings/pseuds/beerecordings
Summary: Jackie gets into a fight he can't handle.Maybe he got into it on purpose.Maybe he kind of likes the way that Anti gives him what he can't admit out loud that he wants - punishment.He comes home with a face full of new scars and he doesn't know how to make it right again.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 55





	1. Chapter 1

“You're just a little failure.”  
“I know that!” Jackie screams, and picks up a crowbar, and slashes it through Anti's incorporeal form again and again and again. “I know that! I know! I know! You think I need you to tell me that? You think I need your help to hate myself? I know what I am! I know what I am! I know what I am!”  
Anti's laughing. He watches Jackie with something like hunger in his eyes. “You want me to torture you, huh? Is that what you want?”  
“No,” stammers Jackie, shaking his stiff head.  
“Yes, you do. You came out here looking for a defeat, not a fight.”  
“We'll fucking see, glitch!” Jackie swings.  
Anti has him beat in less than thirty seconds. Jackie's way off his game. He strikes him twice in the face, bends his arm around, kicks him in the back, and lays him out on the ground, kneeling over him with a knife in his hands. Jackie expects him to gloat, but not today. Today, Anti brings the knife down on him, and cuts him til he screams, slicing deep into the flesh of his face and tearing his skin into a wave of swift heavy blood. Jackie screams until he can't scream any longer, and then he sets his head down on the cold pavement of the alleyway, and closes his eyes.  
“Do you feel better?” asks Anti flatly.  
Jackie bites his lip.  
“Do you feel better?” Anti repeats, reaching out to stroke the edge of his jaw with his thumb.  
The pain is so loud he can barely think through it. His face stings, stings like ripped flesh and mangled muscles, stings like electricity and fire and blood. He's very warm. He needs to pass out.  
“Yes,” he whispers, and wishes he could stop crying. The salt burns his cuts and leaves tracks of orange between the mask of red that coats his whole face. “Yes, I feel better.”  
Anti hums and leans down, running a careful hand through his hair. He sighs contentedly and licks a trail of blood and water off the side of Jackie's face.  
“Good,” he purrs, savoring the taste of salt and copper. “You're a good little puppet to keep coming after me time and again. Same place next time your self-hatred devours you again, alright? Like the old gods with a sacrifice. I'm the god and you're the meat, if you didn't understand.”  
He gets to his feet. “And you should really call Schneep,” he adds, flickering away. “You're losing a lot of blood and those will scar. Badly. Until next time, big brother.”  
Jackie floats weightlessly above his own body, so near to unconsciousness he can barely move. Finally, his hand finds his phone in his pocket. He knows how to get to Schneep's number without looking, which is lucky. There's too much blood in his eyes to see.  
“Hi, Jackie,” answers Schneep's level voice on the other end. “Are you almost home? I think Chase is cooking something if you want to have dinner here.”  
Jackie laughs. His mouth is full of blood. He wonders what Chase is cooking.  
“Jackie?” asks Schneep. “Are you there?”  
Is he? Is he?  
“Jackie,” Schneep repeats, and Jackie can hear his voice frown. “Jackie, is everything okay?”  
Jackie stares up at the stars through a haze of red. He thinks he could tell him, if he wanted to, could tell him that he's near Argus Place, that he's hurt, that he's got a fresh face of scars, that he hates himself, that he's wanted to die for weeks now, and finally found someone who might oblige him. He thinks he could tell him that he's sorry.  
“Jackie,” says Schneep, one more time, like he can sense in the silence a sanguine resignation. “What's going on?”  
Jackie hangs up.  
He bleeds alone.  
He feels better.


	2. Chapter 2

Henrik is so soft with him that Jackie knows he is angry.  
He bandages him with gentle hands, smooths his hair from his face, holds his wrists and smiles at him, does not cry when he is watching, sits with him for long, long hours in the hospital, and Jackie sees, in every soft and loving movement, a bright red fury panting in Henrik's chest.  
“I'm sorry,” says Jackie, again and again and again.  
“Don't be sorry,” Henrik soothes and murmurs, touching his cheek or pressing their heads together or once even laying a quick, shy kiss on the heel of Jackie's hand. “Don't be sorry. Just don't do that to me again.”  
It never once makes his anger falter. He does it with fury, and with guilt, and with a deep and painful hopelessness in his bright blue eyes.  
Jackie knows he will never admit any of it, so he doesn't confront him. He just lies pathetic in his hospital bed and wishes he could undo the choice that he made.  
Wishes, at least, that he had never called Henrik, so his brother would not have had to suffer the knowledge that he was bleeding out in the middle of Brighton, would not have had to take to the streets for hours in search of him, would not have had to ride with him in an ambulance to the hospital, sobbing and choking and begging Jackie to live.  
He makes a lot of wishes in those first couple weeks. That he could be somebody else, somebody better, somebody more like the person Jack made him to be. But in the end, above all else, he wishes to never make Henrik hurt like this again.  
He sees so many things in the way Henrik moves, sees so many words he never says, words like “I have been here too many times” and “I can no longer watch my brothers run towards death” and even, sometimes, “I was created to heal and to save you, but I am wax and feathers and all I can do is try to snatch your falling corpse from the sky as you fall, you foolish, reckless, well-loved Icarus.”  
And what do you say to that heavy, heavy silence?  
“Ich liebe dich,” Jackie chooses.  
Henrik turns away every time, busy with some medicine or his gloves, so Jackie does not see the tears in his eyes, and can only whisper back, “I love you too.”  
He does.  
Always has. Always will.  
But he is angry too.  
And the anger stays with him even when they bring Jackie home.

For his part, Chase can barely look Jackie in the eyes.  
This is difficult in part because Jackie's face is swaddled in gauze and bandages, but mostly because Chase starts to feel sick and shaky every time he looks at his brother and thinks about his corpse.  
There are so many times – dozens of times, hundreds of times – in those first few weeks where he wants to start drinking again. There is too much in the world for him to feel, and he is just something small and useless drowning in the middle of despair and gritted teeth, and he would so prefer to drink himself to sleep and take his time getting up again.  
But Jackie was there for him when he wanted to die, and they barely even knew each other back then. So Chase does not touch his whiskey and does not sneak out of the house. Chase goes to Jackie's side, and the two of them look each other in the eyes when they can manage it, and somehow, somehow, in the love that shines in Chase's eyes and curves on his mouth, Jackie starts to feel better.  
“I don't want to lose you,” says Chase on a late night that they're both surviving side-by-side. “I couldn't bear to lose you.”  
Jackie looks up at him. Watches his cool blue eyes and his kind hands.  
“You won't,” he says.  
And saying it is like – is like –  
He doesn't know why he's crying.  
Saying it is like redeeming himself, at least a little, at least for this moment in time.  
“I love you so much.”  
“I love you too, Chaser.”  
“You're going to have all the help you need, man. All the help you need. I swear. Okay?”  
“Okay.”  
“I just – you just have to want to be better. You have to work for it. You have to stay with me, bro, cause it would destroy me to lose you.”  
“I'm sorry.”  
“Don't be sorry. Don't be sorry. Can I hug you, man?”  
“Yeah, Chaser, of course – ”  
They move together like waves on the ocean, and crash into each other's arms, and Chase holds Jackie like only little brothers can do – warm and tight and so very, very admiring, even in the deepest fear and the brightest hope, squeezing his arms tight around Jackie's stomach and letting his brother hold him back, hold him close for a long time, until the world, when they return to it, seems a little bit lighter to carry.  
“I'm right here,” Chase whispers, pressed against his shoulder. “I'm right here and I'm not going anywhere. You know that, right? Please tell me you know that, because I can't think about you being scared and alone anymore.”  
Jackie's sobbing like his heart has crumpled.  
There were once days when he was alone. When, in his pain, he would drag himself home and stitch himself up without help and go out for fights without worrying about who would mourn him if he lost.  
But his brothers are here now.  
And he doesn't want them to be alone like he once was.  
He prays to whatever gods are listening that Chase will never feel alone again.  
“I'm so fucking overwhelmed all the time,” Jackie sighs, letting his head fall on top of Chase's.  
His little brother sniffles, shrugs, and looks up at him.  
“Want to play Mario Kart?” he asks.  
Yeah. He does. You have your lights in the darkness, and Chase – gentle, knowing, ferocious little Chase – is one sunny star affixed in the very heart of Jackie's galaxy.

On a Monday night, Jameson's head appears in the doorway of Jackie's room. His little brother is bathed in the soft gold light of the hallway and his silvery eyes cut through the darkness with a look of something soft and pleading.  
“Hey, Jaimer,” calls Jackie, before he can dart away again. “You don't have to hover in the doorway. Come here. Why are you so skittish lately, huh? Come here, I want to see you.”  
Usually JJ likes to hang out at the end of his bed, reading or coloring or falling asleep. Jackie's room is neat and peaceful and always toasty warm.  
But he waits in the doorway for a long time tonight.  
“Come here,” says Jackie, something hot and regretful forming in his chest. “Please come sit with me, Jameson.”  
JJ pads over and jumps up onto his bed, sitting down beside him and meeting his eyes. Jackie reaches out to tug a piece of his fringe, smiling wearily. “You need a haircut, I think,” he murmurs. “And the blue's almost gone. You're growing up on me, I guess.”  
Jamie sighs and touches the edge of Jackie's chin.  
“I guess,” he repeats.  
“What's the matter?”  
JJ draws away again.  
He thinks for a long time.  
“Fear is not a strong enough word,” say his hands finally.  
Jackie stops, blinks, restarts.  
“Wh – sorry, bud, I didn't catch that, can you – ”  
“Fear,” says Jameson, slowly. “Is not a strong enough word.”  
Jackie can't meet his eyes.  
“That was such a terrible night,” says Jamie, and this little brother does not pull his punches, does not dodge or avoid or stay silent when he has something to say, just tilts his chin up to make sure that Jackie is watching, and signs, “Why the fuck did you do that to yourself?”  
Jackie stares at him. Tries to breathe deep. Lets Jameson run his cautious knuckles along a red scar on Jackie's cheek.  
“I don't know,” he croaks out finally.  
“No, you do. Tell me.”  
“Jamie, please, I have a therapist, okay? Don't make me – ”  
“No, I need to hear it,” Jameson slashes, something darknening in his tear-burned eyes. “I need to know why the fuck you did that to yourself.”  
Jackie covers his mouth with his hands, breathing hard.  
“Here's the thing, Jackie,” continues Jameson Jackson, with fierce, lost, frightened eyes. “You're right. I am growing up. Sometimes you all act like I don't know what's going on, but I do. I get it. I see. I see more than the rest of you sometimes, because you all like to pretend that things are okay when they're really not. And I see you trying to be better, for Chase, for Henrik. But I think right now you can't answer my question because the reason that you went out and let Anti do this to you has not gone away.”  
Jackie is held between the gravity of planets, still and torn and exposed to the universe.  
“I think you still want to die,” adds Jameson, and it's lucky he can sign, because if he could speak he wouldn't be able to now.  
Jackie is choking. Jackie is choking.  
“Fear is not a strong enough word,” finishes his little brother. “Fear is not a strong enough word for what I feel.”  
Jackie doesn't have it in him to answer after that. He doesn't know what to say. He's sorry, but he can't really express it, not enough, not enough for it to mean anything.  
Because Jameson is right.  
Jackie stills wants to die.  
Jameson spends the night at his side. In all that time, Jackie cannot find an answer for him.  
But Jameson stays anyway.  
With Jackie's sins bared.  
With his self-hatred making the air cold.  
Jameson stays anyway.  
And in the morning, when Jackie wakes up and finds him at his side, he realizes that he doesn't want to want to die anymore.  
Not just for Henrik. Not just for Marvin and Chase. Not just for his beloved baby brother, sitting soft and breathing slow beside him, his long dark eyelashes fallen on his cheeks and his face peaceful and patient.  
In that moment, for his own sake, Jackie wants to live.

“You're so stupid,” says Marvin, when they're alone somewhere the others won't hear.  
Jackie hums an affirmation and lies back on the floor, rubbing his hands against the carpet in a bored stimming movement. He loves the soft fabric of Marvin's heavy blue constellation rug.  
“I mean it,” says Marvin.  
His voice is low and irritated, like a cat angry at being left out in the cold all night. _Grousing,_ Jackie thinks, distantly. He doesn't remember exactly what the word means, but he's pretty sure it's right. _That's his grousing voice._  
Something strikes him in the shoulder and he grunts, turning to the side in time to see a shoe flopping onto its side next to him. “Why'd you throw that?” he protests, rubbing his shoulder just to be dramatic.  
“Are you even listening?” snaps Marvin.  
“Yeah,” snaps back Jackie, not in a mood to take his little brother's shit. “I'm stupid, I get it.”  
“I don't think you do.” He emphasizes the last word by chucking the other shoe. Jackie bats it out of his face and sits up, glaring.  
“This is how you're dealing with it, huh?”  
“What, your suicide attempt?”  
“Don't call it that. I lost a fight.”  
Marvin lets out a noise somewhere between a scream and a growl. “You're so stupid!” he cries, slamming his hand against the little dipper imprinted on his rug. “You don't have the first idea how pissed I am at you!”  
Jackie slams his hand against the side of Marvin's bed, scowling as he gets to his feet. “I don't know what you're trying to say, but I don't appreciate you acting like a brat. What else is new, though?”  
Fury fills Marvin's face like a fire lit and Jackie has to turn away, biting his lip, admitting to himself that Marvin has always been a little terrifying when he wants to be. He braces himself for the impact of words angry and biting. His little brother has a bear-trap mouth when he wants to, and eyes that flash like the ocean roiling.  
But Marvin doesn't give him a reply. When Jackie looks back at him, Marvin is hiding his face in his hands, curled in on himself, silent. Cold as the rain dripping miserably down his window.  
Jackie bounces on his heels uncertainly, glancing around the room, wondering if this is something he can justify running away from. Marvin's upset, right? He likes to be left alone when he's upset.  
No, he doesn't. It's only his pride that makes him say that. Jackie knows. Proud Marvin, powerful Marvin, cold Marvin. Loving Marvin, loyal Marvin, steady, warm, perfect Marvin.  
“I'm sorry,” says Jackie.  
“You're not, though,” answers Marvin, very quietly. More quietly than Jackie has ever heard him speak. “You're not.”  
Jackie shifts on his feet, closing his eyes.  
“I know you better than anyone, Jackie.”  
Yes. A long time now they've been together. A long time now Marvin has been at his side. A long time he has had the privilege of taking care of him, and – sometimes, when he allowed it, when he was weak and tired and went to Marvin's side and collapsed like a dying star content to die right there on his shoulder – he has allowed himself the warmth of letting Marvin take care of him too.  
“I love you. I can't believe... I can't believe you would try to leave me alone. I've let you see the darkest parts of myself and you couldn't give that back to me, couldn't let me in. Am I not enough? I know I can be a little – well – a lot of people don't like me. But I thought you knew I loved you, and I – I'll do anything to help, Jackie, I'll change anything about myself if you need it, but I don't understand. I don't understand anything anymore. I trusted you to trust me and you... you... how could you not have come to me? Just tell me why you couldn't come to me, please, please, please.”  
Oh, fuck, he never wants to hear Marvin's voice shatter like that again.  
“I'm so angry at you,” hisses Marvin. Tears drip through his hands. “I'm so – I'm so – I'd do anything, Jackie, I'd do anything to make your pain stop but you didn't... didn't even ask, and I showed up at the hospital, and when I saw you I thought you were already...”  
Oh, fuck, Jackie can't fucking breathe.  
“Marvin,” he chokes.  
Marvin curls in around a cat-shaped pillow on his bed and wraps his arms around himself. His body has stopped expecting comfort from anybody else.  
And Jackie?  
Jackie flees his room.  
Like a fucking coward.  
Can't bear to hear him sobbing like that. Like his heart is open and bleeding out, and all he can do is cry, and cry, and cry for the betrayal of it all, for the hurt lancing through him like a blade Jackie put there and can't seem to draw out, no matter how much he wants to.  
“I'm sorry,” he tries to text him later. “It wasn't anything about you. It had nothing to do with you. It was my weakness. It was my self-hatred. You have always been my heart. My little brother. You have always given me anything I asked for. Loved me harder than anyone I ever knew before. You are the sun and I'm just this cold little planet that was lucky enough to orbit into your warmth one day. I guess there are some days when even you can't reach me, though, and, my dearest friend, I wasn't strong enough to circle any closer that day.”  
But everything feels like an excuse and he doesn't know how to fix any of this. He never hits send.  
Through his vent, he hears Henrik and Chase talking to Marvin, low and soothing. Probably Jameson is up there too. They look after each other well these days. He loves them more than he knows how to express. His little brothers. _You are the only thing my heart ever beat for. Even without you, when I was alone, I was waiting for you, and you, and you, and you. Stars in my galaxy._  
His brain wants to tell him that they'd all be happier without him. But this is just the grief he would leave them with, and he can't put them through it again. He refuses to put them through it again. He has to make this right. He has to. His heart has to be stronger than this darkness inside his head – or, on the days when everything inside him is weak, he has to trust himself to the strength of somebody else.  
And that's all he ends up texting – no, no, he will tell him instead. He will say it, out loud, and make it true. He will tell him, tomorrow, that the next time his whole body is crying out for a blade to punish him, he will go, instead, to Marvin's arms.  
“Because I do trust you,” he says. “And I know that you love me, much as I've hurt you.”  
Sometimes accepting love is the greatest apology.  
It makes Marvin cry all over again, but that's because it hurts to get your heart put back together again, bit by bit, day by trusting day, watching Jackie come to him again and again, and learn how to be strong and weak at the same time.

Four weeks later finds him bleeding.  
Not from the face or the hands, but from the stomach.  
The bullet is a chunk of steel in his side. He can almost get it between his fingers if he tries. There's too much blood, though. Everything is slippery and hot and very far away.  
It hurts.  
Hurts like fire and light, hurts like an explosion and a collapse, hurts not like relief, but like fear and stress and agony. There's a way out, though. He's not alone, after all.  
Jackie picks up his phone.  
Jackie calls Henrik.  
“Schneep,” he says.  
There's no level voice this time, no promise of food at home or cool inquiry. Schneep is terrified from the moment he answers the phone.  
“Where are you?” he demands, in a voice that shakes. “Where are you, what happened?”  
Jackie bites down tears. He laughs, just a little.  
“I'm near the park where Chase brings Hunter and Izzy. Can you come get me?”  
“Yes,” Henrik stammers, and already Jackie hears him moving and calling to Chase. “Yes, I'm coming, right away, I'm coming. Just stay with me. The good doctor is on the way.”  
“Henrik,” says Jackie.  
“Yes, yes, what is it?”  
“I'm sorry.”  
“What? Don't worry about it.”  
“I'm sorry for what happened with Anti that night.”  
“If you are talking about the cuts on your face, you have apologized a hundred times.”  
“No, I haven't,” Jackie whispers.  
Blood leaks down his hands.  
“I was sorry that you caught me.”  
Henrik is breathing heavy on the other side of the line.  
“But I wasn't sorry that I let him do that to me.”  
Henrik is crying on the other side of the line.  
“Henrik, I have never wanted to see you and Chase and Jamie and Marv suffer. You know that, right? But now – now I think I – I think I want to stop hating myself.”  
Oh, Henrik feels useless. He's on his knees, weeping like the world has just decided not to end after all.  
“I want to live. I want to live without this anger. I want to live without this – Schneep, it's been so long since I loved myself. You and Chase and Jamie and Marv, you are all I have loved for long months now. And I want to get better. For you, for me, for everyone and everything.”  
Jackie is bleeding. But there is no relief. No restoration. No reprieve in this injury.  
“Henrik, I'm sorry.”  
And the anger that Schneep has held onto for more than a month now –  
He lets it go.  
“I love you,” he says.  
He does.  
Always has. Always will.  
“And I will help you, my brother, my Jackie.”  
Always. Always. Always.  
“I will see you well again.”  
Jackie laughs and sinks low on the wall, covering his injury up, stemming the blood, trusting that Henrik will be here in time.  
He's really going to live, huh? He's really going to stop hating himself. He's really going to make this a life worth living.  
He feels better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading this sad one. Seriously, I appreciate it :) Hope you enjoyed. This was posted originally on Tumblr under the same username, but the Marvin section is new. Because I was writing so many stories where he was dead at the time that I forgot about him lol. Sorry, Marv.


End file.
